Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Well, it seems that the GST in Singapore is going to be raised to 7%. What does it mean?

Let's do a simple calculation. Assuming each month, a person spend SGD300 on food and SGD100 on public transport. So, in a year, he will spend SGD4800 - which I think most people would have spent more than that in a year for food and transportation.

So, for the first year, he would have paid SGD336 in GST.

Now, let's assume that this money were to be invested in some mutual funds, say for an annual return of 6%, which I think is pretty conservative, for 10 years with the profit going back to investment. As a comparison, Warren Buffett is getting average 24.7% annual return from investment.

Over 10 years, this would have compounded to about SGD567.66. While the absolute figure is not big, it is a whopping 68.9% increase from the initial capital of SGD336!

And this is only based on 1 year's worth of GST. :)

Update #1: It seems that 6% ROI per annum is too low, in relation to the 7% GST that will be charged!

Monday, October 30, 2006

October is a pretty interesting month. Missed both Ocktober fest and Halloween, haha.

Instead, went for a short trip to Desaru over the weekends with a couple of friends. Came back with a karting bug bite. So, who wanna go karting? :p

=====

On a more serious note, I learnt from Kenny Sia's blog about a fellow Malaysian lady, Yvonne Foong who is having this battle with Neurofibromatosis type II. She wrote a biography entitled, "I’m not sick, just a bit unwell". It's not out in Singapore yet, but maybe in JB? Anyhow, I'd like to wish her a success for her surgery.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

The other day, a good friend of mine was lamenting on how he thought he was not suited to be an entrepreneur. Deep down, I felt the same way, and yet at the same time, I was also thinking that everyone could be if he chosed so - yes, there's duality in me! The questions are why and why not?

"The price of a dream" is an excellent article which gives a very frank insight on why someone wants to take the road less trodden. On the contrary, it also implies reasons as to why people take the common path.

I once told another good friend of mine that I felt I had another chance to do something radical (read: extreme) before 30 because I felt that 30 marked the boundary when one would become jaded. Well, I was right and wrong. After reading this article about genius, it seems that there are 2 kinds of geniuses - conceptual and experimental. There is a shorter version over here. And so, it seems the age old phrase "It's Never Too Late" is still applicable. There is hope since technically we still have at least two peaks unused, haha.

The contributor for the first article, Daniel Pink, has also written a book entitled "A Whole New Mind", which is about the change of Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Kinda exciting that things are moving so fast.

A quick search on BookJetty reveals that there are only two copies at the National Library. Well, let's see if it's still there this weekend, otherwise, I'll have to get it at one of the book stores.